Post Mortem Archive: Science

Martin Gardner, who captured a popular audience with his writings about recreational math and science, died yesterday, the Associated Press has reported. He was 95. Mr. Gardner was perhaps best known for the "Mathematical Games" column he created for Scientific American. He produced the column for 25 years, introducing a...

Want to reduce your carbon footprint forever? New Zealand artist Greg Holdsworth has just the product for you: the "green" coffin. Made of biodegradable non-toxic materials, Holdsworth's coffins are environmentally safe alternatives to traditional caskets which are sometimes made of rare, expensive wood, or even PVC plastic. He's called the...

Devra Kleiman, 67, the zoologist who oversaw the reproductive drama of the National Zoo's first giant panda pair, died April 29 of cancer at George Washington University Hospital. Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were gifts from China who arrived at the zoo in 1972, just a week after Dr. Kleiman was...

Joanne Simpson, earlier known as Joanne Malkus, had one of those lives that makes you go "Wow." Dr. Simpson, the first female meteorologist to earn a doctorate, developed the first scientific model of clouds, discovered what keeps hurricanes whirling forward, and revealed what drives the atmospheric currents in the tropics....

Two distinguished NASA employees died recently: aerospace engineer Aaron Cohen, director of the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston during and after the Challenger shuttle tragedy, died Feb. 25. And photographer WIlliam Taub, whose images record NASA's history from the Mercury and Gemini manned space flights to the Apollo 11...

M. Gordon Wolman, a professor of geography at Johns Hopkins University for more than 50 years, died Feb. 24 at his Baltimore home. He was 85. Known by everyone as "Reds" for his bright shock of hair (which eventually became gray), Dr. Wolman was reportedly as beloved by his students...